WinSCP on macOS

There is no WinSCP for Mac. This is the closest thing.

WinSCP is a genuinely great piece of free Windows software, and it has never been ported. If you have landed on a Mac and miss the two-pane transfer window with an editor attached, this covers the same ground — plus the terminal WinSCP had to hand to PuTTY.

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macOS, Linux, Windows, Android & iOS. Free plan available.

Remote file editing over SFTP on macOS in Tempest

Tempest vs WinSCP

What carries over, and what does not.

Tempest WinSCP
Platforms macOS, Linux, Windows, Android, iOS Windows only
Transfer protocols SFTP, FTP and FTPS SFTP, SCP, FTP, FTPS
S3 & WebDAV Yes Yes
Built-in editor Yes, with syntax highlighting Yes
Terminal Full SSH client in the same window Opens PuTTY
Scripted automation Snippets and scheduled runs Powerful scripting and .NET assembly
Price Free plan; Pro subscription or lifetime Free, open source

WinSCP is free and open source with an automation story this does not match. If you are on Windows and happy, there is no reason to move.

The bit people miss most

Edit on the server, save, done

The WinSCP habit is double-clicking a config file, changing a line, and saving it back without thinking about it. That habit transfers intact.

The editor opens remote files in place and writes them back over the same connection. SFTP file manager
Syntax highlighting for the files you actually edit — nginx, yaml, ini, json, shell.
Bookmarks for the paths you always end up at, and a mode that follows the terminal's working directory.

One window, not two

The terminal is not a separate program

WinSCP's own answer to the shell is to launch PuTTY. Here the session you are browsing is the session you are typing in.

Restart the service you just reconfigured without switching apps or re-authenticating.
Split the workspace so the file tree and the log tail are side by side. Split screens
Jump hosts apply to the file browser as well as the shell — a bastion is not a special case. Jump host guide
Terminal and file browser on the same host in one Tempest window

The rest of the storage

S3 buckets and WebDAV shares, same browser

The endpoints that are not servers still hold your files. They live in the same list.

S3 and S3-compatible endpoints, path-style addressing included for MinIO and Ceph. Cloud storage browser
WebDAV shares from Nextcloud, Synology and the rest.
Plain FTP for the hosting panel that has never offered anything else.
Credentials stored zero-knowledge encrypted and synced to your other machines. Where credentials are stored

Frequently asked questions

Is it free?
SFTP, FTP, S3, WebDAV, SSH and Mosh are free permanently, on one synced device. The in-place editor and bookmarks — the two things that make this feel like WinSCP — are Pro, which is the honest version of the comparison above.
Is there an official WinSCP for macOS?
No. WinSCP is a Windows application and its authors have said a port is not planned. Running it under Wine is possible and not pleasant.
What do most people use instead on a Mac?
Cyberduck, ForkLift, or the terminal. The gap those leave is the terminal-plus-files-in-one-window workflow, which is what this is built around.
Can I keep using WinSCP on my work PC?
Of course. Nothing here changes the Windows machine, and the same host list syncs to both.
Does it do WinSCP-style scripting?
No — WinSCP's scripting and .NET assembly are ahead here. Snippets and scheduled runs cover recurring command work, not scripted transfer pipelines. Snippets & scheduled runs
Is SCP supported?
Transfers go over SFTP, which every modern OpenSSH server provides and which OpenSSH itself now uses for scp. Legacy SCP-only devices are the exception rather than the rule.

Keep exploring

SFTP client FileZilla alternative S3 browser SSH client for Mac PuTTY for Mac

The two-pane habit, on the laptop you have now.

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